September 28, 2022 | By Greg Dougherty

The shift towards cloud-based systems shows no signs of stopping. The public cloud offers clear benefits to businesses and its economies of scale lead to significant savings. But increasingly, businesses are finding that the public cloud is not the right tool for every job.

Latency and security issues are the main drivers for a business to maintain ownership of a private cloud and associated data facilities. A hybrid cloud involves keeping these private and public clouds communicating seamlessly, with the benefits of both.

Security

 

While security features in public cloud systems are constantly being improved, it is not risk free – even the best security protections can be vulnerable to login details being phished.

Certain sectors such as finance, law and government have an extra layer of security/compliance requirements, with penalties for a data breach reaching up to millions of dollars. These requirements drive the need for a secure private cloud to minimize potential data exposure.

Scalability

 

In terms of economies of scale, the private cloud just can’t compete with the public cloud. Businesses can take advantage by keeping their sensitive and critical operations on their private cloud, but moving resource heavy and non-critical operations to the public cloud.

Flexibility

 

The hybrid cloud setup is most advantageous to businesses and sectors that experience large variations in demand across the year – accountants at tax season, or retail businesses before with holiday peaks.

A baseline level can be kept in constant operation from the private cloud, with public cloud resources instantly pulled in to meet the periods of high activity.

Blending the best parts of private and public clouds is an attractive prospect for businesses in today’s rapidly changing tech landscape. A study by independent market research consultancy Vansen Bourne found that 60% of those who responded have made the change, or are considering changing, to a hybrid cloud environment.